VANTABLACK VOMIT

It felt like I needed to spew a void of darkness. It was clung, deep to my ribs, a sentient mucus that would not expel. Poisoning my heart as the panacea started to settle within my fractured brain, a tourniquet to stop the thoughts of harm spilling into the street.

I try to heave it out, nothing gives, throat becomes tight, fit to bursting. I cast you out, my symbiote, my Subtle Shadow. I hover over white porcelain, frantically eager to exorcise vantablack vomit. No light will escape its grasp, that's why my soul aches in sleep, why my thoughts are those of a man unknown to me. I look in the mirror and see the face of a man alien to my inner plateau.

I have dreamt of murder. In the sanctity of my nighttime meanderings I have slane. In my lucid escape I have wiped the sweat from my brow and bit my fingernails, trying to decipher dream from reality. It creeps in when I'm low, a carrion call to the darkness. Someone is buried within my house, albeit a house of the mind or some patchwork creation of the many domains I have frequented in my time. For some reason I think it is the most genius of hiding places. No one can police dream. There in a grave-like aperture beneath the stairs, among ancient dust and childhood photos, under loose tiles and wood, a body wrapped in bin bags and hessian cloth . . .

It's me, isn't it? I have buried myself for so long now. The Subtle Shadow has had the monopoly on my psyche for too long. My soul, buried in mummified remnants of everyday life. How long have I been here, down in the dark? How long have I been bound to the servitude of depression? A shipwrecked mariner on an island of habitual banality. How long have I really been me?

It's not your fault

The Sertraline is kicking in, just. I want to choke on this slug within. Rip it to shreds with my teeth and spit it out. It won't budge. I must persevere, but it is so hard. It toys with me this sentient cancer. It has me cornered, even in sleep. It will show me my grave and maim and cajole. I have no sanctity.

Is this enough? The pills. They can't outwit it because they can't touch the thoughts. They can't touch memory. The Subtle Shadow exists beyond matter. Pills can only mend what's before them. I need something deeper. I need wisdom.

Talk

Physician heal thyself. The algorithm of life has brought me full circle once more. Here, to the gong of the long night. Doomed to lead this merry dance with the Subtle Shadow for all eternity. Can I break the loop? The pills keep me afloat in the maelstrom, but what I really need to do is journey into its dark heart, to face truths now forgotten, hidden in vantablack vomit. I have forgotten myself, the sum of my being now dust in sunbeams. I have become undone.

Where did it all go? Me. I need a guide, to set foot into my id and find that what was lost.

I fear I have flirted with danger. Writing my most recent novel, Smoker on the Porch, I have brought home to roost memories and thoughts long since buried, and in turn my spirit has been smothered - what remnants remain; a decomposing corpse beneath a subconscious floor in languid dark.

I think I was seven, maybe eight, my friend a couple of years older, maybe more. It's all grainy like footage from the 40's. It was a hot summer, me and my friend were making castles with hay bales. Creating intricate passageways in which we could travel. We were at war you see. An imaginary one, though I fear my friend may have had his personal war deep within. We were kids. Playing. That's what I thought. That's how it should be. I took to the dark passageways as my friend beckoned me on. Through freshly cut straw, stuck in the hard earth like metal daggers, my hands red raw. I break for the light and darkness falls . . . a bale has fallen into the path of my escape. My friend calls from behind, and I turn in the narrow dark, summer sun lighting my way, beads of sweat falling from the tip of my nose. Dirty trainers stand at the exit as I hurtle through the coarse tunnel. Another bale falls at my friend's feet . . .

" You got to go back Dom."

The walls feel closer now. The air, thin. I turn in the dark, clawing my way back like a rabid animal, panic now infiltrates my lungs, expelling fear. Desperation has become my weapon, my tears the key to escape. I have been reduced to an animal, pining for release, a boy, de-evolved into an abused and mentally malnourished mutt.

Please

Light bathes me, my tormentor pulls me from the hole, laughing. In my exodus from darkness I feel subservient, his hand touches my shoulder telling me it was just a joke . . . I still haven't got the punchline. It doesn't take thirty five years to decipher a joke does it? I don't laugh. My arm is twisted back across my spine, the pain is horrendous, yet strangely I feel like I have been toughened by darkness and sore hands.

Don't Laugh

Exasperated he let's go, pushing out of frustration and then punches me to the gut. That knot of contact, winded, gasping for air. The summer seems colder now, and the the shine of youth a lot dimmer. My cousin walks away. I can't remember getting up. I suppose I did. My body anyway.

Maelstrom

I'm ready to set sail. I can't be here this time next year. I have to temporarily step off the algorithm and seek the answers to the body under the stairs. To do battle with the Subtle Shadow and reclaim myself, even if takes years to put me back together . I have to go back to that summer and the fortress of hay bales, maybe even further back, to the dreams of the red alligator and the man with spiders hands.

Small Steps

I took that first step this month. I remember scoffing at the idea originally of seeking therapy. My mind is in turmoil and I couldn't give a shit about the money. I have always striven to be the bread winner. To provide for my family and gain a foothold in society where I would happily sleep on a cushion of avaricious comfort. I have lost myself to the corporate machine. Become an entity I abhor. Fuck the money. I am way pass that.

I had my first session over a week ago now. It was the most unusual thing, to hold court with a stranger, to spill the proverbial beans. I gave her a rendition from birth to present day. Each week she will dissect a piece of me and together we will delve headlong into the maelstrom.

I had a glimmer . . . ever so fleeting, transitory in its exposition.

The session had drawn to a close and I looked at my therapist, unsure of the time. Had it really been an hour? Something lifted, something gave, a glimmer of light? No, it was more than that. The feeling of a problem shared? I couldn't place it. It felt I had walked seven miles with a ton of bricks, heaving my legs through dark molasses and slowly but surely I placed them down to the floor. A flutter of well-being passed over me, as if I had spent an hour sunbathing on Gaia's labia.

For the first time in a long time, my soul glimmered in vantablack vomit. I'm having more of that.